Sermons from Lone
Rock Bible Church Really Good Questions (Part II) We are asking six questions from Jesus’
words to His disciples on the eve of His arrest. After Jesus gave His final instructions,
He turned to His Father in John 17: But first: 1. Who am I? (John 13) On a commercial plane, as the craft is
being maneuvered to the runway and beginning to take off, the flight attendant will stand
up and give instructions, how to do the seatbelt, how to find the flotation cushion, what
to do should we lose cabin pressure. If we are flying over water who gets to kick out the
door. You tune it out or you read or daydream or look out the window. If two of the four engines are out and
you are over the Pacific Ocean and the flight attendant stands up and says, “Please
pay attention. We are going to have to ditch.” nobody is sleeping. We are riveted
suddenly to that flight attendant. We are all ears because we want to survive. Jesus is giving instructions to these
disciples and it occurred to me what is really going here. What if someone were to stand
before our congregation today and say, “In just a few days Christianity as you know
it will be no more. You will no longer have a church, no longer have Christian radio,
Christian books. You are on your own. The government will be beyond (?) neutral and
antagonistic toward you. You will meet with the disfavor of your neighbors. It is going to
get ugly. There are a few things, though, you need to know.” I bet we would listen. This is where Jesus is with His
disciples. He is leaving them. The familiarity and the security of their teacher will be
no more. They are about to be the church in an antagonistic and hostile community. They
had never been there before. He is giving them instruction now. It is right down to the
wire. Will they survive or will they not? This is what is on their mind. He is going away
and all bets are off. So He leaves them with instructions. They are the instructions that
we have out of these few chapters. Some of these basic questions are just that --
fundamental, if you will, to Christian survival. 4.
How am I helped? (John 14:16-31) In light of the crisis that is looming
for these disciples, this is a good question. “Jesus, you will not physically be here
as we know you to be. How am I helped? Where will I get help? To whom will we turn?” John 14 He is going to give you a helper. That
word is translated “comforter” or “encourager” or “intercessor.”
It is kind of a multifaceted word. Please understand that this Helper (capital H) is
indispensable, vital to success once Jesus is gone. He wants them to understand that.. I was a helper once with the Asbestos
Workers Local. We were wrapping pipes at a place called the Fast Flux Test Facility. I was
not yet one of the guys; I was a helper -- hang around, grab a tool, bring them to the
workers and then stand around. There was a lot of standing around listening for that magic
word, “Helper!” I just brought stuff. They could do the job without me. But in
this case, please go to the other end of the spectrum and know Jesus is saying, “You
have to have this one!” The Helper, the Holy Spirit, the
Spirit of truth will be your helper. Background here is very important. I will review
quickly what the biblical context is for this giving of the Holy Spirit. In Jeremiah 31,
God, through Jeremiah, reminds the people, “You used to have the Old Covenant, but
you messed it up because you were all wrong in your hearts so now you are going to have a
new one. In this New Covenant I am going to step in personally and get the job done. I am
going to send My Spirit and He is going to animate you, change you, work through you, use
you, to build My kingdom.” In Ezekiel 36 that prophet gets a
little more specific. 26"Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within
you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. The Holy Spirit makes us alive and
animates us toward God. That is His job because naturally we would have none of it.
Supernaturally, however, He invades us and He changes us. The Old Testament promise is now
about to become a New Testament reality. 16"I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper,
that He may be with you forever; Think about that. Here is God. He
shows up as the Holy Spirit. He comes and lives inside you and me, His people. Literally,
He is in there, encased somehow in this body of flesh. How long is He going to live?
Forever! He will be with you forever. He is the energizing agent of God who will keep us
in His good graces living and enjoying God forever. If the Holy Spirit lives forever and
the Holy Spirit lives in me, I live forever. That’s why He says you cannot do it
without Him. He will link you with eternity, literally. That is huge! Helper? Not the way I was a helper.
There is more to it than that as far as the Holy Spirit is concerned. 17that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive,
because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and
will be in you. He is the Spirit of truth uniquely
bestowed. By the way, the Holy Spirit is not “It.” He is a person. There are a couple verses in Ephesians
I would like us to see. This is good news, that God by His grace has invaded, has stepped
in and changed things on behalf of His people. Ephesians
1:13 “You also” are the
Ephesians. Ephesus was the fourth largest city in the Roman Empire in the first century,
at least a quarter of a million people. Patently cosmopolitan. When I say cosmopolitan,
think “Cosmo.” That was their culture; hedonistic would be a nice way of putting
it. Were they such virtuous folks that God looked down from heaven in His kind, benevolent
way and said, “Oh, those Ephesians are so nice! I think I’ll send my Spirit to
live in them and make them live forever.” No, the Ephesians were about as bad as,
well, us. Saved by grace.! Look what happens here with them. You
also, he says, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation --
having also believed (put all your trust in Jesus only). Having done that, you were sealed
in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, given as a pledge of our inheritance with a view
to the redemption of God’s own possession to the praise of His glory. He is God’s seal upon us, the
pledge, the down payment, meaning that for the time being the Holy Spirit lives in us as
God’s seal to hold us until eternity future kicks in. Then He guarantees our arrival
there. He is a pledge of our inheritance. That is wonderful news. The Holy Spirit is a
wonderful Helper and God has sent Him. Ephesians
4:30 There are many verses where we could
find truth about the Spirit of God, but He is uniquely bestowed and He holds us for keeps.
That I greatly appreciate. He is, further, the Spirit of truth,
given to impart truth. When I use “the truth,” I am not talking here about maybe
truth or relative truth or what is true to you, but what is “true truth.”
Frances Schaeffer coined that expression “true truth.” Not the negotiable,
relative truth, which is so prevalent in our society today.
Not opinion, not preference, not maybe, but true. That is what the Spirit
stands on. 26"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send
in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to
you. We have to be a little careful here
because the Holy Spirit does this teaching thing in two different ways and sometimes we
get confused and say, “If the Holy Spirit lives within me why do I need to memorize
Scripture? After all, when the chips are down, when my back is against the wall, will He
not come through and just bring to my remembrance all that He has taught me? There are two ways the Spirit does the
truth thing. First, truth to the apostles. This is the their mail primarily. He says the
Holy Spirit will remind you the things I have taught you because you apostles are going to
have to write it down. Once you have written it down, we have a New Testament. It comes
from the writings of the apostles as they were taught by the Holy Spirit after Jesus had
given them earthly instruction. That is the first way and the primary way in this verse.
We have to be careful as we look at these verses that we do not steal someone else’s
mail. That is a federal offense. Secondly has to do with Christians,
with believers in general. Let me give you a couple passages to support this. The Holy
Spirit’s teaching ministry, present in the believer. Remember, He is there to stay.
He seals us and in His indwelling presence He teaches us and over time He changes us. Paul now is writing to the
Corinthians. The Corinthians made the Ephesians look like paragons of virtue.
12Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit
who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, Here is the way I look at it. The Holy
Spirit, according to the Bible, is responsible for the authorship of the Scriptures (II
Timothy 3:16-17). All Scripture is God-breathed. Breath, spirit, wind, air -- it’s
all one word. God’s Spirit is responsible to deliver the Scriptures. That’s why
we say the Bible is inspired by virtue of the Spirit’s authorship and orchestration. The Spirit does that in your life and
mine. The Spirit saves us. He convicts us of our sin. He quickens us, gives us new life in
Christ. Then He sets up shop and lives there. So on the one hand, Scriptures; on the other
hand, Christians, who are Bible believers. What happens when the believer
interacts with the Bible? The circuit is completed and there is power there that God uses
to change our lives. There is something, mystical, supernatural, spiritual about the Holy
Spirit-indwelt believer interacting with the Holy Spirit-inspired Bible. It changes us and
we are able to be spiritually discerning.. When I became a Christian, suddenly,
inexplicably, the Bible started to mean something to me. I had read it before, but the
Holy Spirit comes into my life and begins to change the way I see things, makes a real
difference and then when I interact with the Word, it’s a different Bible than I ever
thought. In I John 2, he is talking to
believers, in all likelihood believers in Ephesis again. I
John 2 27As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in
you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about
all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him I John was written to correct some
error. Among the error those readers were facing were those people with this super special
spiritual angle on the inner mind of God. They set themselves up as gurus and said if you
really want to know what God thinks or what God wants, ask me because I know, and you
cannot know if you don’t ask me. John says you don’t need a guru. You have the
Scriptures, that which was taught you and you have the Holy Spirit. Away with the guru!.
You don’t need him because you have the Spirit and you have the Word. He is our Helper. We can’t go anywhere
without Him. He is indispensable. He is vital. How am I helped? By God’s
gracious Spirit. It is our practice to periodically
gather around the Lord’s table. Really, the Lord’s table puts so much in
perspective, as we need it. Let’s remember that the Holy Spirit was only sent when
the Son, Jesus, finished His work. As Jesus goes to the cross two days beyond John 14 and
15, He knows He is leaving. He knows exactly where He is going. He is clearly aware that
He will have nails driven into His hands and into His feet. He is cognizant that He is
headed for a criminal’s death that He, of himself, does not deserve. The Spirit, He says, will help you
make sense of this once I am gone, but if I don’t go away, my kingdom will not
progress. I have to make the payment. In the days of the Bible nearly
everyone, and this would include the disciples, could not understand why God’s
Messiah, His anointed deliver, the king from heaven, should have to die. They didn’t
understand that. What Jesus taught them and later reminded them and what eventually they
understood was that if the king does not die, you keep your sins yourself and you pay for
them. Only the king is worth your sin’s payment. That is what the Bible teaches, so
when we come to the Lord’s supper we want to remind ourselves that first, in our
hearts, have I put all my trust in the One who died on the cross. The Bible says “you
do this in remembrance of Me.” This is for those who know Me, those who have trusted
Me. In large measure, this is an object
lesson for God’s people. The point of
the bread is not just in the bread itself, it is in the breaking of it. As you break the
bread, be reminded that this is His body memorialized and his body was broken. He
voluntarily offered his body to be radically and violently broken so that there would be
no doubt that our savior identified with our experience to the nth degree. The cup is not just a holdover from barbaric days of animal sacrifice. God makes very clear that when it comes to human beings, the life is in the blood and without the blood, there is no life. That is why Jesus shed His. Sacrifice? Yes. Barbaric? Perhaps. Effective? Thankfully. "Scripture
taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Jim Carlson 2005, Lone Rock Bible Church, Stevensville Montana, USA |